we're alone, just like you said, aureus

[basilica]

basilica

She is oblivious to the tumult that exists just beneath the surface.
She has aged, certainly, but she has not gotten any wises in the years that have separated them. He had seemed plagued by so much, even in the earliest days of their youth, that perhaps she might have been troubled to find him in any other condition.

To know that she was the cause of his discomfort now, though, would certainly eat her alive. She would have no choice but to leave him, to spare him whatever unease she has unwittingly thrust upon him.

And yet, she remains oblivious.
Even as he speaks and she remembers so plainly how easily they had fallen into step that day. How they had wandered without any destination in mind, how happy she had been to be so aimless.

The years. The years. It’s strange to think how much time has passed when it feels as if it was just yesterday that they’d met in the Playground and he had saved her from her loneliness. She rolls her shoulders in a kind of shrug, the smile remaining steadfast as she considers all the way things have changed.

“They haven’t been unkind,” she tells him, which isn’t a lie. She tilts her head then, the smile slipping just barely as she studies his face. Just as handsome now as he had been then, she thinks. Just as troubled.

“And you, Aureus?” she asks him, swallowing down the impulse to reach out and touch him, “are you all right?”

heaven's gate had
such eloquent graffiti

@[aureus]